Of Curnonsky’s famous list of France’s five greatest white wines, I have the least experience with Château Grillet. In fact, I’ve never even visited (yet). I’ve also had mixed experiences, with some rather ephemeral wines from one era, and some rather oaky ones from another. But tonight all that changed. I opened a bottle without a label, and the cork is only marked “Château Grillet”. But the bottle is 75cl, not 73cl, and the capsule was lead, not tin; so I’m inclined to situate this in the late 1970s, maybe '78 or '79 given the quality. And the quality is quite extraordinary. Firstly the wine appears, visually, to be about five years old. There’s zero oxidation. The exotic qualities of Viognier are fully kept in check: aromatically, think white peach, waxy lemon rind, hints of rose petals, wet stones, pine nuts. The palate is suave, glossy and textural but beautifully fresh, to the extent that you could swear it grew on limestone; it’s weightless, and unerringly precise. Received opinions are followed too slavishly in wine, but Curnonsky’s taxonomy is starting to make more sense to me.
So I was wondering, what have people’s experiences been with old Grillet? How do the different eras of the estate’s history break down? Does anyone drink this stuff?
Btw, that 1979 we had was bottled in a 0,70-liter bottle. I’d imagine they changed to 0,75 later on.
And I do agree that these older Grillets can be remarkably youthful for their age! I was really surprised how youthful most these seemes, at least for their age.
Yeah, go figure. The bottle looked slightly different from the younger bottles we had, but mainly due to the different colored glass. It was a tiny bit shorter and it might’ve been slightly slimmer, but it’s perfectly possible that it has been the same bottle size during that time, but they’ve just labeled the wine with 70 cl:
I was just messaged with a photo of a 1983 Grillet bottle that had “0.7l” stamped on the bottle, so it seems there have been differently sized bottles circulating around, even in a single vintage!
I drank this last month at my house in France. 75cl. I recall the bottle size and shape/ weight changing in the mid 80s. I used to pick up 12 bottles every year when I traveled with my parents from Northern Spain to the UK. At first the owner (Neyret-Gachet) was quite offish for reasons I’ll keep to myself but once we resolved his concern he welcomed us into the cellar and we enjoyed many hours of tasting. The old bottles were very special but you could sense that the contemporary ones (from the late 70s and early 80s) lacked the complexity and concentration of earlier years.
The 1990 we drank last month was as fresh as a daisy. It would stand head and shoulders with many 1990 White Burgundies. Old bottles are frequently available at auction in France. I’d have no hesitation buying bottles back into the 70s.
In 1990, when I was living in Geneva, there was a Christie’s auction. I had never attended an auction, and screwed up the only lot I had a winning bid on, ending up with two cases of Canon 1982 rather than the Latour ‘85 I thought I was buying. I have never regretted it.
At the pre tasting though, there were some interesting older wines, including an 1899 Grillet. The color was medium brown, and the nose a little Maderized but you could still smell and taste the lychees and apricots. The estimate was low, and even though this time I was bidding on the right wine, it went way beyond what I was prepared to pay.
I can’t be certain about the capsule but I’m pretty sure it was lead. I’ll check my other bottles when I’m back in France next month.
As for vintages, some of my favourites are 1970 (Renaissance bottling), 1971, 1978, 1979, 1985, 1988, 1990. I’m not a fan of their 1990s wine in general although I’m sure I’ll be proved wrong at some stage !
